Tory eccentrics

Tweet Hearing Cameron dismiss one of his MEPs as 'eccentric' had echoes of John Major's comment that whenever the names of certain of his own backbenchers were mentioned, he heard 'the flapping of white coats'. Cameron, like Major, has been seriously embarrassed by comments made by someone on his own side. I suspect that, again like Major, he will have difficulty in controlling the individual concerned.

He's worked hard to try and give the impression that the NHS would be safe in his hands, but lingering doubts remain in the minds of many of us. Not so much because of what Cameron himself actually says, but because of two other factors.

Firstly, history - what they are saying officially now is at odds with what they've said and done in the past. They did after all attempt to get the NHS to run on the basis of an internal market, a change which Edwina Hart is only now, belatedly, starting to unravel in Wales, and which remains in operation in England.

The second is probably more important - it's always been clear that there is a sizeable group of people within the Conservative Party who simply do not accept the principle of the NHS. They haven't gone away under Cameron; they've merely been persuaded to bite their tongues - until now.

Of course Cameron wants to give the impression that Hannan is a maverick, an eccentric - it's a natural reaction when he sees his carefully laid strategy being very publicly unpicked. But Hannan has merely expressed publicly, and in graphic terms, what I suspect a number of his party colleagues also think. The unanswered question is how many of them think like Hannan - and how much influence would that school of thought have on a Cameron government?